Billions Season 2: “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?” Not Axe.

We are finally in that last stretch, exactly 2 months away from Billions Season 2 Premiere on Showtime, and this week has been exceptional that it started with new Season 2 poster followed by a new Season 2 tease revealing a bit more about the state of mind our characters are in, and ended with some thrilling casting news!

I wanna start with the casting news! Well, while I was thinking if my dream show could make me any happier, Billions has done it again. The brilliant Asia Kate Dillon, who you may know from Orange is the New Black, is joining Billions as Taylor, an exceptionally gifted new intern at Axe Capital. In addition to being an exciting character, Taylor as well as Dillon self-identify as gender non-confirming. And we just applaud the way Billions uses the power of art to celebrate diversity.

Dillon tells Huffington Post that Taylor’s storyline, in contrast to other cultural portrayals of gender non-conforming people, does not focus on the character’s coming out and/or rejection by their family and friends: “Not only is Taylor different from anything we’ve seen on television before, but I am something new, too. I’m here to change the game.” Well, from the only image we have seen so far, Axe, the ultimate expert in surrounding himself with the best and the brightest, seems to be taking Taylor pretty seriously. Welcome to Axe Capital, Taylor!

Next is the intriguing Billions Season 2 poster, with the tagline The Mighty will Fall, pretty much summing up what this season is about and making me feel like a spectator at a boxing match with two heavyweight champions in their prime surrounded by their supporters along with a referee standing between them to make sure they do not kill each other.

On the Left: Team Chuck.

On the Right: Team Axe.

In the Middle: Wendy. She is the obvious winner of Season 1, who time and again, showed us that she could swim with the sharks. And she is a team of one who happens to have strong ties to both teams. Her hand on Chuck’s chest and her eyes on Team Axe, will Wendy be, once again, the mediator in the ultimate pissing contest?

In contrast to earlier Season 2 promos, this last one has MORE Wendy in it, and I am quite intrigued to see her with two new characters on the show: She seems to be exploring some new space with Craig Heidecker “an innovative and ambitious young tech billionaire” and hangs out with Todd Krakow “a stylish and smooth hedge fund whale” who tells her: “I am offering you a chance to redefine yourself in the industry, separate from Axe in every way.”

And, hey, what is Wendy doing on stage holding a prescription bottle? Well, I choose to wildly speculate here. Could it be that Wendy is taking a job at Krakow’s hedge fund as a performance coach and she is introducing herself to the employees here? She may be holding the prescription many of them take to deal with stress and motivation issues and telling them they will not need this now that Wendy Rhoades is in the house! I may be totally off the mark here, but I am inspired by the scene in Season 1 Episode 1: The Pilot where Wendy has a session with Danzig, who asks for a prescription, but Wendy chooses to use her magic on him: “Feel that!” By the end of the session, Danzig is a new man. He does not need a prescription anymore.

Wendy seems determined to keep her distance from the two men whom she probably cared about the most in her life and whom she saw the ultimate betrayal from. It is quite delicious to see her giving the boot to Axe, who needs her back at Axe Capital, with a “that’s not gonna happen” and to Chuck, who needs to get used to the “new reality” not only in his marriage but also at his workplace, with an “I think it makes sense for you to get your own place.”

Chuck is in deep trouble. The attorney general calls him down to Washington and she may be firing him. On top of that Ari Spyros informs Chuck that they have opened an investigation into the conduct of his office and the man leading the investigation is dangerous.

Enters Oliver Dake, played by Christopher Denham whom you may know from Argo. Dake, who has the looks of a man from a previous decade with his suit and haircut and glasses, reckons he is determined to dig deep until he finds the truth but I am sure he has his own personal agenda like everyone else on Billions!

Given that his office is under investigation, the best Chuck can do is to re-build his reputation through a case “screaming for justice” which his team is now tasked with finding! I told you earlier here THAT case may have something to do with Lawrence Boyd who runs the investment bank Spartan Ives and is known to have never bet on a bad stock. We did not meet Mr Boyd in person in Season 1 but heard of him multiple times. He is one of the most respected figures in the world of finance that Wags calls him “the healing waters of Lourdes.” But now that we see “windbreakers” leaving the Spartan-Ives building with boxes, healing waters may be turning into troubled waters. The new tease sort of confirms my line of thought that we now see Boyd telling Axe “I need to know how to beat him.” Given that nothing is what it seems on Billions though, I am cynical about everything I see being said or done, and I am now thinking if the entire Boyd case could be Axe’s doing – part of his action plan to get to Chuck. And even the remote possibility of it makes me giggle. Oh, Billions, what have you done to me?

It turns out Boyd is not the only person that wants to talk to Axe. Axe Capital receives interesting visitors this season varying from Oliver Dake to Chuck Rhoades. And while I am dying to know about what they talk, I am equally curious about the timing of Chuck’s visit, before or after Dake’s visit, as well as whether it is Axe that invites Chuck or it is Chuck that drops by!

While we do not know the circumstances under which Axe and Chuck meet, we certainly know, and the last tease reveals a little bit more about Axe’s current state of mind, that Axe is now beyond obsessed with Chuck.

I do not believe a word of it when Axe, in a previous promo, tells Chuck he never thinks about the evening Chuck made him rip Axe Capital apart. Oh yeah he is thinking about it. And Axe, in fact, confirms my suspicions in the new teaser:“I’m hearing his name in my sleep, underneath every thought I have.” I am assuming it is Chuck that he is talking about. THAT seems to be driving Axe crazy. He is restless. He does not feel safe. He wants to eliminate Chuck once and for all. And as I talked about earlier here, Axe’s guys do not seem to be comfortable with Axe’s obsession reaching new heights. And, Hall joins the club, too, in the new promo! We see him being quite unwilling to go after Chuck because “there is no opening now” but the boss insists: “Find one.”

The boss is at war. And, yeah, it seems the Megadeth tshirt reveals his state of mind. I have never been into metal music but we are lucky to have Lady Trader who grew up with it and she has told me Megadeth’s most famous song is called “Peace Sells, but Who’s Buying?” in line with the theme of war in Billions! Now, please look closely at Axe’s t-shirt. And, Voila! The exact lyrics are written on it!

Peace sells, but Axe is not buying it.

Moreover, he believes “Hate is nature’s most perfect energy source. It’s endlessly renewable.” WHOA. I really need to be cruel to be kind here.

Axe is WRONG.

Hate may be a motivating force to an extent and I imagine young Axe  may have constantly used it as a fuel while he was climbing the social ladder and fulfilling his dream of “getting rich and getting even.” But, hate, as much as it may create energy, it may also absorb your energy and consume you. It may ultimately destroy you. So, I think it is vital that Team Axe take pre-cautions before it is too late. And given that they are a smart bunch,  it is possible they start some behind-Axe’s-back operation to bring Wendy back to Axe Capital. I can even imagine Lara, who is not a big Wendy fan, being in the forefront of such an operation if she does her own cost – benefit analysis and concludes it is only Wendy that can fix Axe. It seems Axe is declaring open war, we hear him say “I don’t want to be subtle, I want him to know it’s me” and we all know open war, as Wendy tells Axe in Season 1 Episode 6: The Deal, is not good for anyone.

We talked about possible sources of domestic tension rising in Axelrod household earlier here. Regardless of what the tension is between Lara and Axe, it feels REAL. You see it in their body language. You hear it in the tone Axe uses with her as he asks “how?” when she says she will handle IT. We do not know what IT is, but IT is clearly something that makes Axe talk to his wife in a condescending manner which is planets away from the loving way we are used to seeing Axe with her and I need to say Lara is not the only person irritated by his tone. And, in the new tease, Lara seems to be doing her own thing — from leaving an envelope possibly full of money on a bar counter to telling a man it is not a good idea, and I concur, to test her. We do not know what she is up to, but Lara being Lara, it is not hard to guess she is on her own mission to keep what she has, what they have, as a family, built together and she will stop at nothing in doing that.

Going back to the two men butting heads: While Axe and Chuck are seemingly two very different men, they have more in common than they know. Both are full of themselves. They just cannot see everything is not about them and the actions they take have consequences for everyone around them. They put themselves at the center of a solar system where they obviously expect all planets to get aligned. When you think about it, Axe telling Hall “find one” and Chuck telling his team “find another way” are not terribly different from each other. Both are used to getting what they want and they want to get it no matter what. Both are equally driven and selfish when it comes to their ambitions and this may in fact be more detrimental to them than anything else. Well, maybe it’s time they learn it the hard way that everything is, in fact, not about them.

Finally, I love the brief appearance MetLife Stadium, the home of the NY Jets and NY Giants, makes in the last Billions tease, but I cannot help think about Naming Rights. Yes, it is a good thing Axe is a rich fucking man but he is not doing THAT, or is he? 😀